Idolatry Today: Conclusion (Part 5 of 4)

Yeah, so what. I did it. Five parts in a four part series, I’m just keeping you on your toes.

Really, I just wanted to extend this based on my personal time in the Word of God. I have been reading through Jeremiah and I have trucked along to chapter 34 so far. I have to confess, it’s tough reading. It’s not chronological and I don’t get some of the allusions and word pictures that Jeremiah uses. But I do know this, Israelites were Idolaters. They put marriage, prosperity, and community all above their worship and righteousness to God.

In Chapter 13, God tells Jeremiah to do a very strange thing. He tells Jeremiah to take his loincloth and bury it next to the Euphrates. “After many days,” God tells Jeremiah to go and dig up his loincloth and proclaim a message to Israel. The loincloth symbolized what Israel was supposed to be to God, “as the loincloth clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory, but they would not listen (13:11).”

BUT, because of Israel’s idols, God will spoil them like the Euphrates spoiled Jeremiah’s loincloth. “Thus says the Lord: Even so I will spoil the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. This evil people… who stubbornly follow their own heart and have gone after other gods… shall be like this loincloth (13:9-10).” To summarize: Israel is ugly, dirty, and useless.

I read this and decided to do a little scientific experiment. So, I buried my underwear, and this is what came up.

Guys and girls, here’s the point. At some time, we have all replaced God with something in our life. Whether its been sports, music, relationships or something else; we have all come up dirty like Jeremiah’s loincloth, Israel, and my boxers.

However, new clothes are offered. Revelation 7:13-14 says, “ ‘Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?’… and he said… “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” It goes on to describe how these newly clothed Christians live in perfect righteousness before God.

Have you realized your heart is like rotten boxers yet? New clothes are offered in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ!